Nishikan Martial Arts

1985

Wincanton Karate Club formed with classes held at the Memorial Hall.

1992

January 1992 and the current Chief Instructor for The Honbu, Paul Hacker, starts Karate. The club at this time had moved to a dance studio within the current Hopkins Developments office building on the Tythings.

1995

Paul takes over as the instructor of the club, the club is now based at the Methodist Church Hall. Its a trying time for the club, numbers are low and only one session a week for training.

1998

The club moves to King Arthur's School, training is still only once a week but numbers are growing.

2000

Long time serving student, Jason Brown, becomes Paul's first Dan Grade. 20 years later Jason is still a member of the club.

2001

After lots of negotiations, the club moves to the newly opened Wincanton Sports Centre. Classes are moved to Tuesdays and Thursdays, Saturday mornings were also subsequently introduced.

2002

Paul decides, with the support of Shihan Thompson, to start teaching Karate full-time

2008

By 2008 the club has grown significantly, there are now two sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Its time to turn the page and start the next chapter.

April 2008

With the support of his senior students, Paul and the club embark on a project to create their own dojo, The Honbu. Work starts in April 2008, soft opening June 2008 and the official opening is September 2008. The club which is the headquarters of Washinkai Karate in the West of England now has many satellite clubs with a membership of over 200 students.

May 2018

Senior Instructors Paul, Brett & Steve with the support of their black belts decide to leave the BTKA to form their own association, Nishikan Martial Arts.

We are very proud of our students and what we have achieved in creating our own dojo. A lot of hard work has been put in by the Instructors and Students, to not only create The Honbu but ensure that the standard of Karate is high and to ensure its continuing success.

Vision

Our vision is to provide safe places across the West of England where students can learn a dynamic and realistic form of martial art, with qualified black belt Instructors.

We totally believe in growth from within, we specially select black belt students to become instructors and they are then given extra training to meet our exacting standards. This is a process that can take some years, our vision started 10 years ago with the creation of The Honbu.

With The Honbu, our clubs in local halls and schools we are now very well established as leading provider of martial arts tuition in the West of England, our vision is to expand on that and continue providing places to train for many years to come.

Mission

The sad fact is there are people out there who shouldn't be allowed to teach martial arts. Our mission is to show them up by showing you what good Karate looks like and allowing you to come to your own conclusions.

With our new association we will take everything we have learnt so far and embrace other aspects of the martial arts to enhance our current knowledge and provide the student with a robust, practical and realistic form of karate.

We feel it is really important that anyone coming in to the martial arts understands why they perform a technique in a certain way and understand the history behind it, but also at the same time realise that Karate has moved on and whilst tradition is important, see the value in ensuring techniques work for this day and age.

There is no substitute for regular training and we will continue to ensure that every student has the opportunity to train regularly and it is also our mission to ensure that students have access to courses, competitions and gradings on a regular basis as well as training at an elite level if so desired with a view to trying out for the England squad.